“Oh, we’re all here to see the show.”

by

Adam Spanier and John Benda

There is a place.  It’s a place where children can be free to do as they please without the oppressive, suffocating grip of parental control.  It’s a place in which a myriad of personalities converge in a community of diversity.  It’s a place in which race and gender mean naught, social implications are put on the back burner, and the old high school cliques dissolve in the acidic, yet healing power of unity.  It’s a place where new relationships grow like the well-groomed grass on the front lawn of life, and the twenty-four hour lights are a beacon of hope to all that dwell in the warm confines of McCook Community College’s Brooks Residence Hall.  It’s also a place where the jerk-offs next door woke us up AGAIN at 3:30 this morning with their freakin’ rap music!

Forget what that sweet blonde-haired woman told you about the dorms when you came to enroll.  For the remainder of the school year, we’ll be here to call it as we see it.  This being our second year in the dorms, we feel more than qualified to provide you with all the good times, funny stories, creepy roommates, horrific encounters, and ramen noodles that you can handle.  So, feel free to dump your noodles in the drinking fountain, or park in Andy’s spot.  Just be wary.  We may write about it….

Speaking of horrific encounters, last semester, we took this class called, “History of the Motion Picture.”  The class has nothing to do with this story, but it’s where our evening began.  After class, we walked back to the dorms like we always do, because, unlike half of the men’s basketball team, we feel that driving .001 miles to class is a waste of gas.  Walking in the back door, and up the stairs to our second floor suite, we began to hear riotous laughter coming from the hall in front of our room.  By the time we reached our floor, we could see that there was no way we were getting to our door, due to the swarm of laughing guys filling the hall.  There were people in towels headed for the shower, guys in their baseball uniforms, people in pajamas, and even our R.A, who had emerged from his sanctuary of justice to investigate the noise.  And all were laughing hysterically, holding their stomachs in pain, and wiping their eyes.

“What’s going on, here?”  I asked our friend B.J, who had descended from his deluxe apartment in the sky (the third floor) to see what the noise was about.

“Dude, you’ve got to see this,” he sobbed between laugh-induced convulsions.  He pointed towards the bathroom door.  (Insert intense music here.)

We pushed our way through the gauntlet of laughing faces towards the bathroom door, where a member of the baseball team who had assumed the role of doorman welcomed us with, “So, you guys here to see the show?” 

“Uh, yeah, I guess.”

“Well, go on in!”

As he opened the door for us, a fairly straight-faced Phil Hinde emerged from within.

“You guys ever seen the movie Aliens?” was all he said before rejoining the hysterical crowd that was getting bigger all the time as more and more students were returning from night classes.

Now inside the bathroom, it was up to us to figure out what kind of monster could bring such mayhem to our floor.  We slowly made our way toward the stall, our hearts beating in our ears.  And as one of us slowly pushed open the stall door, our lives flashed before our eyes, but almost immediately, the putrid aroma jerked us back to the reality that lay before us. 

“Holy crap!  How is that possible?” one of us exclaimed.  For inside the toilet lay the most ginormous turd known to man.  No, seriously, this guy was freakin’ huge!  Bigger than anything that could possibly come out of one person at one time.  And somehow it had managed to stay in one piece, even after rigorous flushing.  Of course, to stay in one piece, it was forced to make its way down the back from the seat, through the bottom of the toilet bowl, and up to the top front where its head was nearly above the seat, like a charmed cobra about to strike.  We sunk back in revulsion, before feeling compelled to take another look.  This turd was awe-inspiring.  We could now see why our hall was full of eager spectators.  The turd set a benchmark that every man in the world could aspire to, but few would ever reach.  I seriously wished I had my camera. 

After paying a few more seconds of homage to this golden calf of poop, we left the bathroom and became part of the wet-eyed, gasping, stomach-gripping crowd that was still growing, and still filling our hall with its laughter.  There were enough people in the hall to constitute a fire hazard. 

In fact, no more than five minutes later, the fire alarm went off.  As we were evacuating the building, we overheard our R.A, Joey Taverna, telling a friend, “Great, now I’ve got to call the fire department and tell them it’s a false alarm.  What am I gonna’ tell them?  That there were so many people in the bathroom looking at some guy’s turd that they bumped the fire alarm?” 

“I don’t know,” his friend replied.  “The guys at the fire department might want to see it, too!”